


ain't gonna be yo mama

by oncewewerezombies



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alien Cultural Differences, Alien Culture, Alternia is Terrible, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Motherhood, Parenthood, Puns & Word Play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-08 04:11:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20829209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oncewewerezombies/pseuds/oncewewerezombies
Summary: Just what is a giant fish alien from a species that doesn't have parenthood as a concept meant to do with two human babies anyway? Even if they did come from a meteor.Produced forPro8lematic Fanzine





	ain't gonna be yo mama

One of the wiggly little human grubs you'd picked up from a meteor crash site is crying.

While you're thinking about what to do about it, the _other_ one starts screaming. Then they're both screaming in unison, an unholy chorus of shrieking symphony. Your earfins flare and you hold back a snarl to terrify them into silence with a great effort. You've done that before, and it didn't fucking do ship. Shore, they were quiet for a lil bit, but then they were fuckin louder than ebber and you just don't want to deal wave it. In all fuckin prawnesty, you don't want to deal with _any_ of this shit. Fucking wigglers ain't your cup of steeped bitter leaf beverage.

_You remember - you remember - a battle - a desolate planetoid drifting in space - you'd won, you'd WON, speared that rusty beach right the fuck through from front to back wave your cullin fork but - she'd smiled._

_And said thank you._

_Then she'd died on the ground in front of you and He'd **come** from otter fucking nowhere and He had - He had -_

You shake the gruesome memories off with an effort and press your grasping fronds over your aural clots like it's gonna make the noise the two human grubs are making any less glubbing horrific. The fuck do they want?! You could just eat them, it'd mako things so _much easier_ \- ugh, you know you can't. The urge to stuff them down your gullet to stop 'em screaming ain't what you'd say was going awave though. Flipping up your fucking defishent starmonkey-made phone, you jab your thumbs spitefully into each button as you text Sassacre aboat what's harpooning but very carefully don't acshoally ask for help straight out. Moby you need a lil kelp, but you don’t want to just fuckin admit it.

Sometides you wish you didn't have such a fin about clowns, but there's just something about their capering japery that you can't resist. Moby you ain't got the clowns you're used to here, but Sassacre had filled somefin of a spot in your cardiopump all the same. Even so, sometimes you can't bereef how low you've sunk, getting all fluttery in the fin about a creature that ain't even close to a troll. 

Not where it counted.

He's still kinda cute though. And a bastard in a wave that you find pretty fuckin attractive, for a cod damn mammal. Fuck, this isn't kelpin you wave this shit atoll. What the fuck are you meant to do about these cod damn _sprats?_ Where is Sassacre when you fucking need him? You'd wifed him and ship, the _least he cod fucking do was answer your cod damn texts when you're having a crisis_ \- oh. 

There he was.

SS: You messaged me, my dear?   
BC: shore fuckin did cod damn   
BC: the brats are cryin and i ain't got no idea how to shut them up   
BC: before ya ask   
BC: i checked their diapers and ship   
BC: and they just been fed and i did all the fuckin pattin and coddlin ya meant to do so they get the gas out   
BC: so why the FUCK are they crying like fucking dead things are eating them from the inside   
SS: Humans are somewhat different to your own glorious species, Betty.   
BC: 38X   
BC: yeah, y'all suck.   
SS: They're still far beyond what a normal human baby would be like, my cherub.   
SS: But they do need more care than the young of your kind would require, from what you've told me.   
BC: oh cod wharf the fuck else do they fuckin need???   
BC: 38(   
SS: I'm an old man, my heart, and I'm possibly not the best person to ask.   
SS: Never really looked after any babies myself.   
SS: You could try just cuddling them or what not.   
SS: I've been told little babies like to be held by their caregivers. You know.   
SS: Given physical affections and what not.   
BC: you mean i gotta pick one of these smelly fins up and cuddle it   
BC: just for what? funsies?   
BC: what the fuck. that's disgustin.   
SS: I'd highly recommend it, Betty darling. You should try it, you just might find it works.   
SS: Humans are a social species, and we gain comfort from being touched. Gently, and lovingly.   
BC: y'all oar so fuckin soft, i can't bereef it.   
SS: Sad to say it's true, my love.   
SS: Why don't you give it a try?   
SS: I'll finish up at the office and I'll be home in an hour or so.   
BC: a beach can't take this noise for a fuckin hour, sass.   
SS: I have given you an idea to pursue, beloved.   
BC: you've given me fuckin bull shark but ocray.   
BC: ugh this gonna be gross   
BC: makin me feel like a wiggler fiddler   
SS: I assure you, Betty love, it's completely natural for humans.   
SS: It's akin to why sometimes I just want to hold your hand while we're walking out and about.   
SS: Humans enjoy being touched. Show the babies that they're not alone and you're with them, it will make them feel more secure.   
SS: You may just find it works, my angel.   
BC: this is so fuckin dumb   
BC: if they pee on me, i'm comin for you, sassacre   
SS: That's the least I would expect, dear heart.   
SS: Still may I suggest that you give it a try?   
BC: this is under protest.   
SS: That's my brave girl! I'll see you tonight for dinner.   
BC: 38P   
BC: sea ya, sass   
SS: Fare thee well, dearling.   


Right, hoki. You're gonna smash this ship. You're gonna take such good care of these fucking mammal wigglers, they ain't gonna make a peep. Fuck, what has your life fucking become? You can't believe you're seriously conchsidering this...but you don't know what else to do. You’d been _told_, haddockn’t you. Told what you gotta do and where you gotta go. And every screaming slithering inch of your soul hates that you’re having to do someone else’s bidding but you made a deal. You got told what the conditions were. Moby you didn’t know for reel what you were swimming into, but _you were TOLD_. You ain’t gonna bawl like a grub for its lusus just becrayse you don’t like what you minnow are the conchditions for what you agreed to now.

You gotta take what gets rolled out wave the rattle of the dice when you throw it, but you gotta throw them the fuck first to sea what you gotta deal wave. Shrug. Life is a beach and then you die, what the shell.

But then again - you’re a sore fuckin loser. 

You’ve alwaves been willing to do whatebber it takes to win.

“Cod, you’re such ugly lil fucks,” you tell the babies, and reach out to touch the skin on the cheek of one with the softer backs of your fingers, rather than the clawed tips. You’ve let things slip a lil around the hive, so when you touch it’s near-black gray skin to warm browns instead of the fake-ass peachy pink you’re pulling most days (nights) now. Your claws are still filed to a motherfucking T though, ain’t gonna let your game down just becrayse you’re playin humie out in public. Sassacre knows what the fuck you are, and just who you are. The only perchson on the damn planet who does, and you gonna mako shore it stays that wave. Babies don’t count.

The wigglers have died down into unhappy little whimpers instead of straight trout screaming (thank glub), but the one you’re touching is looking at you with a barely focused gaze. And then it kinda stops. Just makes slack mouth movements at you, while the other one waves its clenched fists and whines.

Huh.

Bending down over the cradle, you pick up the one with the blue eyes and heft it up in the careful way Sassacre showed you. Support the head, mind the weight. You wish you barracuda hired someone to deal with all of this ship, but you didn’t...trust nameless strangers. You don’t know if He would either. 

Nope, this is your job. You’ve done a lot of ship when you were Empress, but you ain’t never done somefin like this. Trolls handled all of this reproduction ship betta, far as you’re thinking. At frond’s length, letting somefin wave some sort of caregiver instinct acshoally take over the whale thing. Lusii. Somehow you’re gonna figure out a way to get them onto this denizen forsaken planet, and they’ll be fucking grateful for it. Who really wanted to take care of wigglers anywave? 

The baby is warm and heavy in your arms, even though you’ve got enough mussel on you to heft a skywhale several clicks on land, not even in the water. It blinks at you, and you swallow a little before scooping the other one up to into your other arm and taking a seat in the rhythmic-motion comfortblock that Sass had insisted you buy. He’d said you need it; you hate that he’s rayght and you’re acshoally usin it for the first tide. The wigglers grub around in their way while you’re holding them, and you put your walking stub against the floor and push. 

Your hair spills out over the back of the comfortblock, and you don’t quite dare to move your fronds too much, so full of whimpering wigglers as they are. But they’re quieting down. Clinging to you almost, faces turned into you and giving off little sighs. Lil green-eyed one gums at its fist, and you relax into the chair slowly. Those two little tense bodies relax with you.

Somefin in your collapsing-expanding cardiovascular system does a lil flip.

“Just a pair of conniving stinkers, huh,” you mutter, the chords in your chirpbox thrumming as you speak Alternian instead of constricting yourself to speak high and even, like a fucking human. It’s a damn strain on you, but you do what you gotta to seem like one of the aliens you’re surrounded wave for minnow. They don’t seem to mind it much, the way real speech rumbles through your thorax, blurry-new eyes finally closing like moby for fuck’s sake they gonna go to sleep for reel this tide. “This what you wanted all along? Ungrateful lil sprats. Shoald eat you for supper. Betta you’d taste good with some proper grubsauce.”

Fuck it. You’re gonna have to glub at Sass that he was right all along. You hate admittin when you wrong, but you shore was wrong. The babies are all quiet now and you push the chair back and forth a little with your walking stub, staring at the dangling vison-imaginator that your human husband made you buy for the soft-skinned wigglers.

Somehow the weight in your arms gets heavier as the wigglers fall asleep. You could get up and put em down in the crib now, you guess. But you don’t. You just don’t feel like it, that’s all. It’s nofin. You don’t care.

You don’t care about these two at all.

_Sweeps later, you face down your daughter across a stretch of gritty sand and you leave her with three holes through her torso and for the grub she’s been raising up to oppose you and thwart your porpoise to find her dead in the dirt._

_You don’t regret it._

_You don’t._


End file.
